by Joel Deutsch
So this was Canter’s, thought Sasha. How many times had Eric suggested they come here at the end of the school day, just a couple of good buds from the Gifted program chilling over a snack and a cold drink after last period? But for some reason, they’d never made it, and so now here he was for the first time, occupying one plump, firm maroon leatherette banquette of a booth against the rear wall of the famous old deli’s dining room by himself with the mismatched if technically identical Rothko twins , Manny and Marvin, sitting side by side across from him While the Latino busboy laid out their paper napkin-wrapped silverware on the Formica table and substituted a full, clean yellow plastic mustard squeeze bottle for the drip-encrusted old one.
The big place was crowded, noisy with conversation and crockery clatter. In a booth in the row across the aisle from Sasha and the Rothkos were two older women in conversation, both sipping from cups whose saucers had wet teabags and lemon slices on them. The thinner of the two, her face gaunt with distress, had nothing before her but the tea, and kept dabbing at her eyes with her napkin. Her plumper companion listened and nodded sympathetically while lifting to her
“Know what you’re gonna have?” asked Manny, as a tired-looking waitress approached, her order pad in hand. The brothers’ copies of the Canter’s menu, wide as dinner plates and twice as long, lay unopened in front of them.
“Not yet,” Said Sasha. “There’s a lot of stuff here.” And so there was. Some of the items were familiar. Scrambled eggs and pancakes, hamburgers and fries, spaghetti, meat loaf and roast chicken. But half of the dishes were things he’d either never heard of, or had heard of but never eaten.
“Maybe the kid’s not hungry,” offered Manny.
“No, I’m definitely hungry,” said Sasha, poring over the menu with furrowed brow. In fact, he was famished. There had been the usual light Shabbat supper before the evening service, the same offering Rabbi Schoenfeld’s wife prepared every week and left warming in a crock pot in the shul’s kitchenette, the point being to avoid having to turn any electricity or gas on or off from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday. The dish, which the rabbi called cholent, was an overcooked stew of sorts, a conglomeration of meat, vegetables and potatoes boiled beyond recognition and tasting as if someone had dumped a whole bottle of Heinz ketchup into it for seasoning. The first time, Sasha had forced down a helping just to be polite. But after that, he had preferred to go hungry until he got home and found some leftover beef or vegetable borsch (Americans, Sasha had learned, called it borscht for some reason, with a t)and black Russian bread or whatever else happened to be in the refrigerator.
“Take my advice,” said Marvin. “go with the pastrami. Best in town, never mind Art’s Famous, never mind Langer’s, forget Nate ‘n’ Al’s. There’s nothing like Canter’s lean pastrami, sliced thin, on rye with seeds and a couple of kosher dill spears. On one plate, you’ve got your meat, your starch thing, your green vegetable, your complete food pyramid.”
“I don’t know,” said Sasha. “Rabbi Schoenfeld says the food in here isn’t kosher, not even the beef and the chicken.”
“Alex,” urged Marvin, “let’s not hold up the poor woman. She’s got a job to do here. Tell you what, why don’t I just order for all three of us, and if you don’t want to eat yours, we can doggie bag it and get you something else. All on us. Sound fair?”
“Okay,” nodded Sasha, and shut his menu.
Marvin looked up at the waitress. “Same thing all around, sweetheart. Three hot pastrami on rye. A bottle of Bud for me and a bottle of Dr. Brown’s Diet Cel-Ray for my brother, here. He’s the one that’s driving. And what to drink for you, Alex?”
“Tea, please,” Sasha told the waitress. “Do I get lemon slices with that?”
“Just like everybody else, hon,” she reassured him, gathering up the menus and leaving.
Sasha, watching the waitress go, noticed that the crying woman and her friend with the cheesecake had disappeared. In their booth now sat two tired-looking men in slacks and nondescript sports jackets, tieless, nursing cups of coffee and talking quietly, as if they were recovering from a long work day at some demanding and not particularly well-remunerated job. One of them was white, late middle age. There was some gray showing in his close-cropped hair, a hint of jowls beneath the chin. The other was Latino, younger by something like 20 years.
“Listen, Alex,”" said Marvin . “You mind if I call you Al?”
“My friends mostly call me Sasha, basically. That would be okay.”
“Russian?” said Marvin?
“yeah.”
“Okay. So it’s Manny, Marv and Sasha. Like the Pep Boys. You know the auto parts store?”
“I’ve seen the billboards,” said Sasha. “I don’t have a car, so I’ve never been there.”
“It’s like the Three Musketeers,” said Manny. “All for one, one for all. Except Jewish.”
“Oh,” said Sasha. “Okay. I get it.”
Marvin emptied the last few drops of Dr. Brown’s Diet Cel-Ray into his glass. “So Sasha, what I wanted to ask you was this. You know what the difference is between kosher and non-kosher?”
“I’m not sure,” admitted Sasha. “Not technically. No.”
“Don’t worry, bubeleh,” said Manny. “To me, I gotta admit, dead meat is just dead meat. All the same. But not to Professor Marvin Rothko here, even though he doesn’t keep kosher himself any more than I do. and you can bet he’s gonna explain the whole megillah ,whether you want to hear the details or not., aren’t you, Marv? You couldn’t stop him if you tried.”
“fuck off, Manny,” said Marvin, smiling. Across the aisle, the waitress was talking to the two men, who both shook their heads in the negative and handed her their menus to take away with her.
To be continued…